Feminism's Identity Crisis

Central to the dominant strain of feminism today is the
belief, articulated by the psychologist Carol Gilligan, that women share a
different voice and different moral sensibilities. Gilligan's work—notably In
a Different Voice (1982)—has been effectively attacked by other feminist
scholars, but criticisms of it have not been widely disseminated, and it has
passed with ease into the vernacular. In a modern-day version of Victorian True
Womanhood, feminists and also some anti-feminists pay tribute to women's
superior nurturing and relational skills and their general "ethic of
caring." Sometimes feminists add parenthetically that differences between
men and women may well be attributable to culture, not nature. But the
qualification is moot. Believers in gender difference tend not to focus on
changing the cultural environment to free men and women from stereotypes, as
equal-rights feminists did twenty years ago; instead they celebrate the
feminine virtues.

It was probably inevitable that the female solidarity at
the base of the feminist movement would foster female chauvinism. All men are
jerks, I might agree on occasion, over a bottle of wine. But that's an
attitude, not an analysis, and only a small minority of separatist feminists
turn it into an ideology. Gilliganism addresses the anxiety that is provoked by
that attitude—the anxiety about compromising their sexuality which many
feminists share with nonfeminists.

Much as they dislike admitting it, feminists generally
harbor or have harbored categorical anger toward men. Some would say that such
anger is simply an initial stage in the development of a feminist
consciousness, but it is also an organizing tool and a fact of life for many
women who believe they live in a sexist world. And whether or not it is laced
with anger, feminism demands fundamental changes in relations between the sexes
and the willingness of feminists to feel like unnatural women and be treated as
such. For heterosexual women, feminism can come at a cost. Carol Gilligan's
work valorizing women's separate emotional sphere helped make it possible for
feminists to be angry at men and challenge their hegemony without feeling
unwomanly. Nancy Rosenblum, a professor of political science at Brown
University, says that Gilliganism resolved the conflict for women between
feminism and femininity by "de-eroticizing it." Different-voice
ideology locates female sexuality in maternity, as did Victorian visions of the
angel in the house. In its simplest form, the idealization of motherhood
reduces popular feminism to the notion that women are nicer than men.

Women are also widely presumed to be less warlike than
men. "Women bring love; that's our role," one woman explained at a
feminist rally against the Gulf War which I attended; it seemed less like a
rally than a revival meeting. Women shared their need "to connect"
and "do relational work." They recalled Jane Addams, the women's
peace movement between the two world wars, and the Ban the Bomb marches of
thirty years ago. They suggested that pacifism was as natural to women as
child-birth, and were barely disconcerted by the presence of women soldiers in
the Gulf. Military women were likely to be considered self-hating or
male-identified or the hapless victims of a racist, classist economy, not
self-determined women with minds and voices all their own. The war was
generally regarded as an allegory of male supremacy; the patriarch Bush was the
moral equivalent of the patriarch Saddam Hussein. If only men would listen to
women, peace, like a chador, would enfold us.

In part, the trouble with True Womanhood is its tendency
to substitute sentimentality for thought. Constance Buchanan, an associate dean
of the Harvard Divinity School, observes that feminists who believe women will
exercise authority differently often haven't done the hard work of figuring out
how they will exercise authority at all. "Many feminists have an almost
magical vision of institutional change," Buchanan says. "They've
focused on gaining access but haven't considered the scale and complexity of
modern institutions, which will not necessarily change simply by virtue of
their presence."

Feminists who claim that women will "make a
difference" do, in fact, often argue their case simply by pointing to the
occasional female manager who works by consensus, paying little attention to
hierarchy and much attention to her employees' feelings—assuming that such
women more accurately represent their sex than women who favor unilateral
decision-making and tend not to nurture employees. In other words,
different-voice feminists often assume their conclusions: the many women whose
characters and behavior contradict traditional models of gender difference
(Margaret Thatcher is the most frequently cited example) are invariably
dismissed as male-identified.

From Marilyn to Hillary

Confronted with the challenge of rationalizing and
accommodating profound differences among women, in both character and ideology,
feminism has never been a tranquil movement, or a cheerfully anarchic one. It
has always been plagued by bitter civil wars over conflicting ideas about
sexuality and gender which lead to conflicting visions of law and social
policy. If men and women are naturally and consistently different in terms of
character, temperament, and moral sensibility, then the law should treat them
differently, as it has through most of our history, with labor legislation that
protects women, for example, or with laws preferring women in custody disputes:
special protection for women, not equal rights, becomes a feminist goal. (Many
feminists basically agree with Marilyn Quayle's assertion that women don't want
to be liberated from their essential natures.) But if men and women do not conform
to masculine and feminine character models, if sex is not a reliable predictor
of behavior, then justice requires a sex-neutral approach to law which
accommodates different people's different characters and experiences (the
approach championed by Ruth Bader Ginsburg twenty years ago).

In academia this has been dubbed the
"sameness-difference" debate, though no one on either side is
suggesting that men and women are the same. Advocates of laws protecting women
suggest that men and women tend to differ from each other in predictable ways,
in accord with gender stereotypes. Equal-rights advocates suggest that men and
women differ unpredictably and that women differ from one another
unpredictably.

It's fair to say that both sides in this debate are
operating in the absence of conclusive scientific evidence confirming or
denying the existence of biologically based, characterological sex differences.
But this is a debate less about science than about law. Even if we could compromise,
and agree that sex and gender roles reflect a mixture of natural and cultural
programming, we'd still have to figure out not only what is feasible for men
and women but also what is just. If there are natural inequities between the
sexes, it is hardly the business of law to codify them.